It doesn’t take a degree in rocket science to be a mystery shopper. Almost anyone can easily slide into the job of a mystery shopper, and many will be able to make a decent part-time income from the job with minimal effort. However, what happens when you are ready to take your earning potential to new heights, to mystery shop on a full-time basis or to otherwise simply be a…
How Mystery Shopping Can Empty Your Wallet
If you have chosen to work as a mystery shopper for your part-time or full-time job, you most likely are not mystery shopping for the fun of it. While few will argue that mystery shopping is indeed a fun job, the bottom line is that you are working to earn money. You may have bills you need to pay, savings goals you want to meet, a retirement account to fund…
Broken Trust: When to Find a New Mystery Shopping Provider to Work With
The relationship between a mystery shopper and a mystery shopping provider is a unique one. Typically, a scheduler working on behalf of the provider is the main contact for the mystery shopper. The mystery shopper and scheduler may work together for years without communicating verbally, or there may only be a handful of conversations that take place over the phone. The two parties can have a healthy, productive work relationship…
How Some Shoppers Are the Cause of Their Low Mystery Shopping Paychecks.
Many mystery shoppers are mostly happy with their jobs. However, if you ask a group of mystery shoppers what one thing they could change about their job if given the chance, the overwhelming majority would likely say that they would like to earn a larger paycheck. While most mystery shopping jobs are not entirely lucrative, the fact is that there are some things that you may be unintentionally doing to…
3 Easy Steps to Finding the Top Mystery Shopping Assignments
If you visit the mystery shopping online forums from time to time, you may have read posts from other mystery shoppers that talk about assignments that pay $50, $75 or more. Such high-paying assignments may sound fabulous to you, but despite your best efforts to find these high-paying assignments, you may be struggling to find assignments that pay more than $15 or $20 for your time and effort. If you…
3 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Mystery Shop With Your Kids
Some of the many great things about mystery shopping is that you can pick and choose the assignments you want to work on, and you can bring your friends or family members along with you while you work on many of those assignments. You can earn money while you chat away with a good friend at a coffee shop assignment, and you can earn money while you go grocery shopping…
Do You Tell People You’re a Mystery Shopper?
When it comes to mystery shopping, many people keep their job a closely guarded secret. This may even involve lying to friends and family from time to time about where you are going or how extra spending money is earned. Other people opt to be open and honest about their job, and some will even voluntarily offer the information before their profession is asked about. The fact is that there…
Blurring the Truth: When Mystery Shoppers Go Too Far
As a mystery shopper, you are being paid via provides by a client to make unbiased observations that have been outlined for you in the mystery shopping requirements. Further, you are being paid to repair back to the client what those observations were by submitting a mystery shopping report. Your report is often used for employee training purposes, managerial development, store improvements and more. It is easy to think that…
How Mystery Shoppers Can Remove the Bull’s Eye on Their Back: Avoiding Scams
Mystery shopping is unfortunately one of the industries that scam artists love to target. Mystery shoppers are believed to be easy targets by scam artists. We work from home, accepting work assignments from companies that we largely communicate with via email. Further, we get paid per assignment rather than based on salary, so we are constantly in search of that perfect assignment that requires little effort and that has a…
Why Isolationism and Mystery Shopping Don’t Mix
It is easy to isolate yourself from your fellow mystery shoppers. In fact, in most cases, you actually have to go out of your way to get to know other mystery shoppers. After all, you cannot exactly sit down and chat with them over a cup of coffee in the break room, as is the case with professional colleagues in other lines of work. Unless you make an effort to…